Yes, I missed week 7. Life got busy! I gained a pound at my week 7 weigh-in. I explain in the video how I got off-track. I lost two pounds at my week 8 weigh-in and am down a total of 15.6. No time to write today, but at least I got my video made. :)
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Week 6 Report
Another week of imperfection down. I'm learning to embrace the imperfection and accept "enormous effort" as good enough. :) I'm learning to have grace with myself and give myself credit where credit is due. This is a huge lesson for me! I think one thing that has helped me with this is that I've been reading my journals from age 14 to the present. I was a huge journal keeper! I've learned that some things haven't changed much in 25 years. I've always been trying to eat healthy, exercise, read my scriptures daily, pray daily, and do many other good things. I've gone through periods of great success and not-so-great success. I think that is just life! Trying to find balance and make good choices among so many different choices. As I read about how hard I tried and I saw myself beating myself up and feeling guilty for every little imperfection, I just wanted to go back in time and tell myself, "Give yourself a break, Sweetie! It's okay. You're a good person. God loves you. Don't be so hard on yourself." It's interesting how I couldn't say that to myself then, and it's hard to say that to myself now, but seeing this big picture of my life spanning many many years just showed me that I am a good person. Ha, ha, it sounds funny to say that, but that's what I concluded. It's so easy to dwell on our weaknesses and the areas we fall short, but it doesn't really help. I mean, it's good to recognize where we need to improve, and set goals to improve, and strive to improve, but it's also important to recognize the good that we do. I saw a lot of good in me in those journal pages, but I couldn't see it at the time. We need to recognize that people love us, warts and all, and we need to love ourselves, warts and all. I think I'm getting a little bit better at that.
I should probably end on that positive note, but I want to talk about something I dealt with last week. This picture represents my moment of shame last week:
That is a drawer I broke in a fit of rage over...nothing! Well, obviously it was something, but it was hard to put my finger on what. I came home from teaching and was disappointed to see that my teenagers hadn't started cooking dinner for the family as instructed (I make my own food). Wednesdays are rushed because everyone has to be at the church by 7 and I get home at 6:15. I started frantically cooking for them and for myself, my son couldn't find his shoes that I had seen on the floor two minutes before, we couldn't find a hammer he needed, my dinner wasn't yummy, and everyone was running late. I opened that drawer to look for a hammer and something was stuck in the drawer making it hard to open. Instead of calmly un-sticking the item, I just kept yanking that drawer until it broke. I wanted to break it! I couldn't understand what was wrong with me. This was SO unlike me. I drove my son to scouts and did some major pondering. Why was I so upset? I think I was upset because I felt like I couldn't stay on top of things, I couldn't parent the way I wanted (remember I'm taking a course on "Peaceful Parenting" and I felt really awesome at it this night---NOT), we couldn't get places on time, and to top it all off, I couldn't comfort myself with food. I couldn't just stick something yummy in my mouth to make myself feel better. I had to just feel that anger and I didn't know how to deal with that, so I broke a drawer. It was not a happy feeling and it gave me a lot to think about. I'm not sure why I'm sharing it, but I think maybe I am because it's important for me to understand the way I have used food to help me with emotions and to find other ways to deal with my emotions other than eating....or breaking drawers! LOL! The drawer is fixed now, and I haven't been having such anger since. Phew! I'm still figuring all of this out. I've been neglecting personal prayer and scripture study lately, so that could have something to do with it. At any rate, attending to those things is a good place to start!
Monday, February 6, 2017
Week 5 Report
Week 5 was full of ups and downs. I had moments where I loved my food and felt excited about eating this way forever, and moments of severe temptation when I felt like someone would have to knock me out to stop me from eating pizza. LOL! Well, no one knocked me out and I didn't eat the pizza, even though I came so close to doing it twice! After resisting Dominos pizza at my son's Robotic competition, I came home and make my own pizza without cheese or meat. I ate a lot of it, even though I really did miss that cheese. I ate a lot that night period.
Inspite of feeling like I was eating too much all week, I still lost more than 3 pounds when I weighed in yesterday. I was extremely shocked and thrilled. I got on and off that scale about three times to make sure it wasn't a mistake. Ha, ha. :) I am down a total of 14 pounds since I began. The moral of the story is, do your best. Make good choices as often as you can, and when your choices are less than stellar, accept that you are human and that life, stress, hormones, emotions, etc. affect your ability to be superwoman all the time and you just have to get over it and make a good choice the next opportunity. Always, always plan to make good choices, but love yourself when you don't and get right back up and keep going. :)
I didn't take any official "before" photos when I started, but the first photo is from Christmas day which was close to my start date. The second photo was yesterday. When you have as much to lose as I do, I think it takes 30 pounds down to actually be noticeable to the general public. However, I'm noticing changes and those jeans I'm wearing in the second photo haven't fit me in a long time. Yay!
Thursday, February 2, 2017
Week 4 Report
I didn't get a video made this week. I'm several days late reporting because I kept hoping to do a video, but between school holidays and kids being home sick, I just couldn't get it in.
Sometimes it feels really easy to eat this way, and sometimes--it feels REALLY hard. Sometimes my food is so delicious I'm over the moon happy with it. At other times, my energy is depleted, my willpower is depleted, my stress levels are high, and I walk into the kitchen to find a hot carry-out pizza on the counter, or chicken nuggets, or mozzarella sticks, or fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies...and then, the real battle begins to rage in my mind. Last week, the nuggets and mozzarella sticks got the best of me, but 10 minutes ago, I walked away from the hot pizza on the counter...It was WAAAAY harder than it should have been! I was SO close to digging in! I'm here now to write in the hope it will help me stay strong in my resolve to choose healthy food for my body. I hope it will help me forget the siren call of the pizza and remember what I want most. Would one bite or one slice hurt me? Probably not in the big scheme of things...but I know it usually doesn't work that way. Once I start to make exceptions and break the bright lines, it gets easier and easier to do it the next time and the next, and before I know it, I'm back where I started, doing the yo-yo lose/gain cycle I've been on for years and I don't want that anymore. It's just hard to remember in the moment of temptation that I want long-term health and wellness more than I want the shot of dopamine that pizza would give me. It's really shocking how hard it is sometimes. Thankfully, I don't feel like this all the time, and that's good to remember. Feelings pass....wait it out...breathe.
The big question you might be asking is why do I have those kinds of food in my house? It's a great question and I'm not sure I have a great answer. When I tried to change to a plant-based diet years ago, I tried to get my whole family on board. Dealing with hungry children who hated everything I made, and desperately wanted to eat anywhere but home, added to my stress. As I decided to commit to doing this again, I just didn't feel ready to engage in that battle again. In addition, I feel strapped for time almost every moment and convenience foods make my life easier. I can pack my kids' lunches in 5 minutes with a bunch of pre-packaged foods, although I cringe a bit doing it. The longer I eat healthy, the more I consider taking on the battle of getting the whole family on board, but I guess I'm just not ready yet. I want to be the example and show I can stick to it myself first. I guess that means I'm choosing to be surrounded by temptation constantly...I'll be thinking about this more. For the record, I didn't have anything to do with getting the pizza!
In spite of giving into temptation a couple of times last week, I didn't give up, and that's saying something! I ate animal products for the first time since January 1st and that made me feel pretty low. Physically it didn't bother me, but I was disappointed with myself for breaking my own commitment. Fortunately, I watched a really great video from Brian Johnson called Habits 101 and it really helped me to not despair. I was able to look at those moments as tiny setbacks and not let them define me or rob me of the progress I have made. Woot, Woot! Here are just a few nuggets of wisdom I gathered from that video:
1) We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, it's a habit. (I gave myself credit for making good choices repeatedly and tried not to dwell on the few times I didn't).
2) Shaming yourself is the quickest way to destroy your willpower. (Boy, I had to remind myself of that a lot!).
3) Get your mind right. We need to have an "experiment mindset." We shouldn't freak out when things don't go well and say "I'm an idiot! I'm a loser!" Instead, we should examine it as data and say, "Hmm...why did that happen? How could we do things differently to get a different result next time?" We shouldn't look at our actions with a win or lose mentality. Instead, we should think--we either win or LEARN. That is a huge one for me as I use the word "fail" too often in my vocabulary about my efforts at various things. Mistakes are an opportunity to learn. Let me say that again: Mistakes are an opportunity to learn. Thinking that way helped me carry on last week instead of bailing out on all my efforts because of one chicken nugget! Ha, ha, where would that get me?
I have also been listening to a parenting course from Aha Parenting and it is helping me in the food area too. Dr. Markham talks about the importance of learning how to regulate our big emotions instead of acting on them. It's good stuff and I'm sure I'll be sharing nuggets of wisdom from her in the future. I'm out of time right now.
I haven't been talking about DDP yoga because I only managed to do it one week! It's not that it was too hard, it's just that I need to figure out how to work it into my day. We were doing it as a family at night, but then things came up at night, we had company visit, and that was the end of that. I walk on the treadmill in the morning, and I could add DDP yoga to my morning exercise, but it's adding one more thing to my brimming plate. I could do yoga instead of the treadmill, but that makes it harder to reach my daily step goal which I really like to do. I'm going to analyze all of this as data and figure out a way to make it happen! :)
Last, but not least, I lost another pound. Down 10 pounds now. Hooray!
I'll leave with a quote from Rip Esselstyn which made me laugh because I could so relate:
"Moderation is a dangerous and insidious slippery slope that'll have you back to your old ways before you can say triple bacon cheeseburger with mayo."
Sometimes it feels really easy to eat this way, and sometimes--it feels REALLY hard. Sometimes my food is so delicious I'm over the moon happy with it. At other times, my energy is depleted, my willpower is depleted, my stress levels are high, and I walk into the kitchen to find a hot carry-out pizza on the counter, or chicken nuggets, or mozzarella sticks, or fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies...and then, the real battle begins to rage in my mind. Last week, the nuggets and mozzarella sticks got the best of me, but 10 minutes ago, I walked away from the hot pizza on the counter...It was WAAAAY harder than it should have been! I was SO close to digging in! I'm here now to write in the hope it will help me stay strong in my resolve to choose healthy food for my body. I hope it will help me forget the siren call of the pizza and remember what I want most. Would one bite or one slice hurt me? Probably not in the big scheme of things...but I know it usually doesn't work that way. Once I start to make exceptions and break the bright lines, it gets easier and easier to do it the next time and the next, and before I know it, I'm back where I started, doing the yo-yo lose/gain cycle I've been on for years and I don't want that anymore. It's just hard to remember in the moment of temptation that I want long-term health and wellness more than I want the shot of dopamine that pizza would give me. It's really shocking how hard it is sometimes. Thankfully, I don't feel like this all the time, and that's good to remember. Feelings pass....wait it out...breathe.
The big question you might be asking is why do I have those kinds of food in my house? It's a great question and I'm not sure I have a great answer. When I tried to change to a plant-based diet years ago, I tried to get my whole family on board. Dealing with hungry children who hated everything I made, and desperately wanted to eat anywhere but home, added to my stress. As I decided to commit to doing this again, I just didn't feel ready to engage in that battle again. In addition, I feel strapped for time almost every moment and convenience foods make my life easier. I can pack my kids' lunches in 5 minutes with a bunch of pre-packaged foods, although I cringe a bit doing it. The longer I eat healthy, the more I consider taking on the battle of getting the whole family on board, but I guess I'm just not ready yet. I want to be the example and show I can stick to it myself first. I guess that means I'm choosing to be surrounded by temptation constantly...I'll be thinking about this more. For the record, I didn't have anything to do with getting the pizza!
In spite of giving into temptation a couple of times last week, I didn't give up, and that's saying something! I ate animal products for the first time since January 1st and that made me feel pretty low. Physically it didn't bother me, but I was disappointed with myself for breaking my own commitment. Fortunately, I watched a really great video from Brian Johnson called Habits 101 and it really helped me to not despair. I was able to look at those moments as tiny setbacks and not let them define me or rob me of the progress I have made. Woot, Woot! Here are just a few nuggets of wisdom I gathered from that video:
1) We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, it's a habit. (I gave myself credit for making good choices repeatedly and tried not to dwell on the few times I didn't).
2) Shaming yourself is the quickest way to destroy your willpower. (Boy, I had to remind myself of that a lot!).
3) Get your mind right. We need to have an "experiment mindset." We shouldn't freak out when things don't go well and say "I'm an idiot! I'm a loser!" Instead, we should examine it as data and say, "Hmm...why did that happen? How could we do things differently to get a different result next time?" We shouldn't look at our actions with a win or lose mentality. Instead, we should think--we either win or LEARN. That is a huge one for me as I use the word "fail" too often in my vocabulary about my efforts at various things. Mistakes are an opportunity to learn. Let me say that again: Mistakes are an opportunity to learn. Thinking that way helped me carry on last week instead of bailing out on all my efforts because of one chicken nugget! Ha, ha, where would that get me?
I have also been listening to a parenting course from Aha Parenting and it is helping me in the food area too. Dr. Markham talks about the importance of learning how to regulate our big emotions instead of acting on them. It's good stuff and I'm sure I'll be sharing nuggets of wisdom from her in the future. I'm out of time right now.
I haven't been talking about DDP yoga because I only managed to do it one week! It's not that it was too hard, it's just that I need to figure out how to work it into my day. We were doing it as a family at night, but then things came up at night, we had company visit, and that was the end of that. I walk on the treadmill in the morning, and I could add DDP yoga to my morning exercise, but it's adding one more thing to my brimming plate. I could do yoga instead of the treadmill, but that makes it harder to reach my daily step goal which I really like to do. I'm going to analyze all of this as data and figure out a way to make it happen! :)
Last, but not least, I lost another pound. Down 10 pounds now. Hooray!
I'll leave with a quote from Rip Esselstyn which made me laugh because I could so relate:
"Moderation is a dangerous and insidious slippery slope that'll have you back to your old ways before you can say triple bacon cheeseburger with mayo."
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